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I Challenge Climate Activists to Bike to the 2014 Climate Summit

I am planning to bike to the 2014 Climate Summit in New York City September 20th and 21st. I am encouraging other climate activists to bike with me. I’m also setting up a network of people willing to provide accommodations for those biking through. If you would be willing to host bicyclists in September let me know.

Why is this important? I lose hope when I see that even my fellow climate activists are unwilling to give up their cars. How can we expect others to make changes that we are unwilling to make ourselves? We need to set a good example for the rest of the world.

For the past three years I’ve been using an electric cargo bicycle as my primary means of transportation. I discovered that ebike battery and motor technology are surprisingly advanced: a 40-pound cargo bike with a 10-pound motor and an 8-pound lithium battery is fully capable of carrying me, my 14-year-old daughter, and four bags of groceries up the steep hills of Ithaca NY. Our city trips are about the same or faster than by car. A day’s worth of energy for our electric bicycle can easily be obtained from a $1,000 solar panel that is about the size of a door. I’ve concluded that an electric bike can easily replace a car for most people at a fraction of the cost, and potentially completely fossil free. So why haven’t ebikes been more widely adopted? The technology is here; all that remains to be done is to bring this transportation breakthrough to the attention of the mainstream.

I propose that our journey to the Climate Summit serve just that purpose: a demonstration of ebike technology’s ability to compete successfully with the automobile, even for long trips. I’ve made several long trips by ebike, including a 350-mile trip from Ithaca NY to Washington D.C. Ebikes, even when piloted by non-athletes, can travel at 25mph. So traveling 100 to 200 miles a day is possible. But staying at hotels in order to charge batteries can be expensive. If we support each other by providing accommodations along the way, we’ll also demonstrate how human kindness can be a welcome substitute for energy use.

I call upon climate activists in New York State and beyond to put their money where their mouth is: let go of your car and take up the best alternative transportation, the electric bike. And use the Climate Summit this fall as a way to show the world what is possible with this revolutionary mode of transportation.